Allegan County Heritage Trail
Tour
The Allegan County Tourist
Council has developed a self-guided tour so that people can
discover and have adventures into the history, sights and sounds of
Allegan County. This
tour will allow people to see historic villages and towns as well
as bountiful farmlands and orchards which were and still are the
backbone of this rural
county. More
information on the Heritage Trail Tour can be found at
www.allegancounty.org/heritagetrail/. This
tour has numerous stops, but it is not necessary to do them
in order, they can be completed in any order.
We plan to place caches at
each historic stop along this
tour. Our goal with
this series is to have fun, but also to enjoy the beautiful sites
of Allegan County. We
also hope that we can bring some history of the area to people who
are interested. Now
let’s get on with our journey.
Welcome to
Saugatuck
William Butler was the first
settler here in 1830.
Early maps of the town show it being called
Kalamazoo.
Unfortunately the legislature gave that name to another town, so
the town was then called
Newark. However, the
postmaster had been calling the town Saugatuck since the post
office opened in 1835.
That was the name of the postmaster’s hometown in Connecticut,
which happened to be appropriate because it’s an Indian word
meaning “mouth of
river”. When the town
was incorporated in 1868, the name Saugatuck became
official.
Like many Michigan towns,
Saugatuck started life based largely on the stands of virgin white
pine, which covered the
landscape. By the late
1860’s, eight lumber mills were going full-blast shipping lumber to
Chicago and other cities around the Great
Lakes. Saugatuck
lumber helped rebuild Chicago after the Great Fire of
1871. But by 1880,
round-the-clock clear cutting had finished off the area’s white
pines. Fruit growing
then replaced lumber as the area’s main resource. By 1884, it was a
major producer of peaches, with many of them being traded and
shipped through the Fruit Exchange in Saugatuck.
During this same period, boat
building became a major industry, with more than 200 vessels being
built between 1880 and
1910. But by the early
part of the 20th century, both the boat building and
fruit growing booms were over, and a new type of industry emerged .
. . tourism. The
area’s natural beauty provided an escape for Chicago and other
Midwestern big-city
residents. Enticing
more tourists to come, even just for the day, was The Big Pavilion
which was built in
1909. Billed as the
second largest dance floor in America, the Pavilion catered to as
many as a thousand people a day during its
heyday. Also emerging
at this time was Saugatuck’s reputation as an artist colony when a
group of Chicago artists established the Summer School of Painting
at the Ox-Bow lagoon.
The Ox-Bow School still exists and is now formally part of the Art
Institute of Chicago.
The best way to explore Saugatuck is on foot where you will find
that it is a town rich with historical architecture and
character. The
Saugatuck-Douglas Historical Society’s award-winning self-guided
walking tour is available at the Information Booth downtown, across
from City Hall. Also,
each year, the Society’s award-winning museum, which has been
called “the best little museum in
Michigan
”, mounts an exhibit on some aspect of local history and
culture.
This container was
place with permission from the property
owner. You will be
looking for a larger micro
container. Bring a pen
or pencil to sign the
log.
We did have some GPS
accuracy issues. The
posted cords are averaged 100
times. You DO NOT have
to go more than 8 feet off the
sidewalk.
Please look for this
cache during daylight hours
only. If you look for
this one at night, there is a good possibility that you will meet
the local law enforcement
officers. You have
been
warned.
Locating the cache should be fairly easy, but retrieving it could
be the hard part due to a high muggle
factor. Have
Fun!!
The FTF prize is an unactivated
Benchmark Geocoin.